drill baby drill

A secret document regarding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations leaked this week shows that oil companies have just as much influence over the governments of the European Union as they do over the government of the U.S.

In the two-page document, the EU makes several arguments about why the TTIP should require the lifting of the U.S. ban on exporting crude oil, including pushing to add a “strong and comprehensive” chapter that would “combine our support for procompetitive regulation while also lifting bilateral restrictions on gas and crude oil, will show our common resolve to increase security and stability through open markets.”

“Because U.S. and European companies, including energy companies, have invested heavily on both sides of the Atlantic, U.S. and EU negotiators are essentially representing the same company interests,” Chase said.

When both sides of a negotiation want the same thing, it is easy to see what the outcome will be.

The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports that “tea party fervor hit a fever-pitch” as the GOP’s “best-known females offered the thousands in attendance a lot of red meat and a healthy dose of girl power,” entering the stage to Martina McBride’s “This One’s For the Girls.”

The “Drill Baby Drill” babes had the grand old partiers all aflutter as they displayed their “mutual admiration”:

“She is so much one of us,” Bachmann said of Palin, “And as absolutely drop dead gorgeous this woman is on the outside, I’m here to testify that she is 20 times more beautiful on the inside.”

Palin responded in equally creepy fashion, recalling their first meeting in Alaska:

“I knew that we’d be buddies when I met her when she said, ‘Drill here, drill now.’ And then I replied, ‘Drill, baby, drill’ and then we both said, ‘You betcha!’”

After spending a few years wandering the political desert, salvaging his tarnished reputation and peddling his views on various conservative outlets, Gingrich made a political comeback of sorts when he founded American Solutions for Winning the Future, a supposedly non-partisan (or, in his words, “tri-partisan”) 527 group, in late 2007.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.